IEA cuts fourth-quarter oil demand forecast on Europe, Sandy

Global oil supply rose by 800,000 barrels a day last month to 90.9 million barrels a day as higher supply from the Americas and the North Sea offset a decline in OPEC output.

The IEA, an adviser to 28 industrialized nations, raised its 2013 forecast for non-OPEC supplies by 150,000 barrels a day to 54.1 million barrels a day.

OPEC supply dropped by 30,000 barrels a day in October to the lowest level in nine months, according to the IEA. The 12 OPEC nations supplied 31.16 million barrels a day in October, which is 4 percent more than the supply limit of 30 million barrels agreed at their last conference in June.

The group, which meets to review output targets in Vienna on Dec. 12, will need to supply 29.8 million barrels of crude a day in the first quarter of next year, according to the IEA’s projections, or 100,000 barrels a day less than the agency forecast a month ago. The so-called ’call’ on OPEC for 2013 was revised 200,000 barrels a day lower to 29.8 million from last month’s report.

With rising supply from North America and some other non- OPEC nations such as Sudan, “Saudi Arabia is expected to curb its current high output to prevent market imbalances emerging,” Samba Financial Group, a Riyadh-based bank, said in an e-mailed report yesterday.

Oil industry inventories in developed nations rose “significantly above” their five-year average in September, to 2.7 billion barrels, the seventh gain in a row, according to the agency. That equates to about 60 days of consumption, or 0.8 days more than last month’s projection.

“A weak economic backdrop - with the global economy forecast to rise by 3.3 percent in 2012 and 3.6 percent in 2013 - continues to restrain oil demand growth throughout the forecast,” the IEA said in its report. “The so-called fiscal cliff looming in the U.S. and ongoing European debt concerns contribute to the downside risk that hangs over” demand projections for industrialized nations, it said.

Overtaking Saudi Arabia

U.S. oil output is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia’s in the next decade, making the world’s biggest fuel consumer almost self-reliant and putting it on track to become a net exporter, the IEA said it its annual World Energy Outlook yesterday.

Growing supplies of crude extracted through new technology including hydraulic fracturing of underground rock formations will transform the U.S. into the largest producer for several years starting about 2020, according to yesterday’s report.